Point Pleasant Issue Pumps Up Bucks Election Interest

May 03, 1987|by HAL MARCOVITZ, The Morning Call

Gerow, with a headquarters established and staffed in Doylestown, complete with a bank of telephones and computer terminals, is sparing no expense to capture the nomination. But he is attempting to accomplish a goal that other candidates in similar positions have failed to accomplish in at least the last two GOP primaries for commissioner.

In 1983, Central Bucks School Director Charles McHenry ran against the party organization and lost. Former Commissioner George M. Metzger attempted a similar candidacy against the endorsed GOP ticket in 1979. He, too, finished third.

The problem for Gerow is that the voters are asked in the primary to nominate two candidates. So every time a Gerow supporter casts a ballot for his candidate, he may also cast a ballot for either Warren or Schweiker. Thus, their vote totals mount despite votes for Gerow.

"It's an uphill fight. There's no question I'm battling the odds," says Gerow. "But I've beaten Andy Warren by a country mile in one election already, and MarkSchweiker has never run out of Middletown Township."

Schweiker, 34, won wide acceptance in the endorsement process. He concedes, however, that his backing for the job came as much from geography as his record as a supervisor. He was the lone candidate from Lower Bucks to be screened by the GOP committee.

It also did not escape the attention of Republican leaders that Schweiker has been a good vote-getter in Middletown, which should be a key municipality in November, since it is the home township of Trench.

Warren and Schweiker have concentrated their attacks in the primary on the Democratic administration, complaining that Fonash and Trench have failed to come to grips with the county's solid-waste problem and that the administration has cut too deeply into county services through its cost- curtailment program.

Gerow has called for an administrative shake-up in the commissioners' office as well as the establishment of an economic development clearinghouse that would assist businesses considering a move into Bucks County.

The 1983 election year was dominated by the pump referendum in May, the arrests and imprisonment of scores of demonstrators at the project site over the summer and the ouster of the Republican administration at the polls in November.

Soon after entering office in 1984, Fonash and Trench stopped construction, but a lengthy court fight has ended in a victory for Philadelphia Electric Co. and the North Penn and North Wales Water authorities, which had signed up to obtain water through the project. The commissioners are now under court order to award bids to restart construction.

As construction crews prepare to re-enter the Point Pleasant site, and as project opponents start talking again about civil disobedience as a means to halting that work, Point Pleasant is sure to return as the dominant issue of the 1987 campaign for county commissioner.

Gerow declines to say how he voted in the 1983 referendum. He says, however, he was among the Republican leaders who urged Warren and Zettick that year to place the question on the ballot.

Gerow says he supports Gov. Robert P. Casey's decision to review the project permits. He says, however,

he intends to abide by any court order that directs the county government to restart the work. The candidate says he would like to see the issue resolved this year.

"I don't want to go through five more years of the pump. I want to be the commissioner who leads us into the post-pump era," he says.

Schweiker says he also welcomes the Casey administration's review of the project, and he promises to abide by the outcome of the review as well as the court orders.

"It seems to me the pump is going to be built, and I'll act with diligence to carry out the mandate of the court. But I'll act with equal diligence to end the project if that's the decision by the court and the DER (Department of Environmental Resources)," says Schweiker.

Warren contends that drought-prone areas of Bucks and Montgomery counties are in dire need of the water supply system. He remains the Point Pleasant project's most vocal cheerleader in the Bucks County Courthouse.

He says, "The average Bucks Countian is tired of hearing about it. The average voter will be looking for a lot of other things in a candidate, like experience doing a job on a full-time basis and the ability to speak to the issues."